Discoverers

R.E. 
this half term we are investigating the People of God, today we all joined in to bring the story of Noah to life, learning about how people were behaving and how this made God feel to see how His creation was being treated. We thought about what made Noah different and why God chose to save him and two of every animal during the flood. We asked lots of question about the story, thinking about how it would make us feel if we were one of the characters.

In music this half term we have been exploring dynamics by creating animal noises and expressing movement to a piece of music. We have been learning different call and response rhythms with our partners using percussion instruments. 

In maths we have been doing lots of work on partitioning and the value of each digit in a number.

In PE we have been learning how to do a chest pass and other ball skills. We then played some fun games to use the skills we have been practicing.

On fruity Friday this week we tried figs. Some of us loved them and wanted more but some of us weren’t sure. All of us tried them which was was great as she shows that we are all willing to try new things.

We had a great time in Hopwood Woods this week. We found lots of evidence that the missing tiger had been there. We found orange fur in the tress, lots of empty food packets, scratch marks on the trees and even some green fur.! We made some humane traps to try to capture the tiger for the zookeeper. They looked amazing and hoped that they would work. The next morning the zookeeper contacted Mrs Howarth to say that a combination of all of our traps had helped to successfully capture Rusty the escaped tiger. She has now transported him back safely to Blackpool Zoo. However, he is quite weak and poorly still and some of his stripes have turned green. He has not been able to return to the big  cat enclosure yet as he is being treated at the animal hospital at the zoo. We are hoping that he will make a speedy recovery so that we can go and visit him at the zoo. We would also like to adopt Rusty the tiger.

This week we had a surprise visit from a zookeeper from Blackpool Zoo. She told us that a tiger called Rusty had escaped and asked if we had seen the missing tiger. We told her that a tiger had come to our classroom and eaten lots of unhealthy things. She is now very worried that he will be poorly snd his stripes might even have turned green! We promised the zookeeper that we would do our best to help her find the tiger by making ‘LOST posters’ and going to the woods (where we think Rusty is hiding) to make some humane traps to capture him.

When we came into school on Wednesday morning we were extremely shocked to find that an extraordinary visitor had come to our classroom. It was the tiger who came to tea and he had made a terrible mess. He had eaten lots of unhealthy food such as pizza,cakes,chocolate, biscuits, crisps and bread. He had also drank all the tea in the teapot, milk, fizzy drinks and all of the water from the tap. We saw him on the security cameras in the classroom and he also left lots of muddy footprints everywhere. Where is he now?

Fruity Friday

As part of learning about healthy eating,each Friday this half term we are going to be trying a new fruit that perhaps some of the children haven’t tried before. One of our classroom expectations that the children came up with themselves was to ‘Try new things’. This week we tried passion fruit. At first we all thought that it didn’t look very appetising both on the outside and when we cut it open. We used our five senses to describe the fruit. Therefore the next thing we did was feel the fruit and smell it. We did agree that although it felt a bit strange it did smell lovely. We then tasted it. Lots of the children were surprised by the taste and loved it, others weren’t sure but what I was really pleased about was that everyone tried it. Here are some of the adjectives the children came up with to describe the taste - sour, tangy, zesty, juicy, crunchy, sweet, delicious. Look out for what we try next Friday.

Wow! What an amazing start to the term we have had in Discoverers Class. We have done lots of fun activities to help us all get to know each other and work as a team over the past 3 days. We held a Discoverers Olympics. There were five teams completing lots of activities to earn points for their Olympic team. We did a scavenger hunt, a word challenge game where the children had to find scrabble letters hidden all around our classroom and outdoor area then make as many words as they could. They earned points for making the most amount of words and for creating the longest word. We had some really impressive words. The longest was ‘beautifully’. We also did a cups game - each team had 6 cups to stack and were given string and an elastic band but weren’t allowed to touch the cups with their hands. Throughout this game all the children showed great teamwork, perseverance, patience and resilience. They never gave up and in the end were all successful! Look at the huge smiles on their faces when they completed this task. We ended the Discoverers Olympics with an activity that involved building the tallest tower out of marshmallows and spaghetti. The children found this extremely difficult but had fantastic results. All of the children have displayed all of our school values this half term and I can’t wait for the year ahead. I’m expecting great things from all of the Discoverers!

Welcome back Discoverers Class.  I hope that you have all had an amazing summer and that you are all ready for our fun year ahead.  I can't wait to see all of your smiley faces on Wednesday 4th September 2024.

I have lots of great things planned for us this year.  Please read the letter below that outlines some of the things we will be doing, class notices and expectations and what it means to be a good Discoverer.

Mrs Howarth

We had an amazing day today at Eureka. We all loved the science show that we did cslked ‘From the chew to the pop’ it was very hands on and informative.

As a treat for our fantastic performance of our class production ‘The Wonderful World of Wonks’ we had a wonkalicious chocolate day. We learnt all about how chocolate is made from the bean to the bar. Then we made our own chocolate lollies and other moulded chocolates. We ended the day with a chocolate fountain which was delicious.

Wow! What a fantastic day we had today on the inflatable. We played lots of fun games and went through as fast as we could.

In DT we have been learning all about solid structures. We found out that using a running bond makes structures stronger. We designed then made a bridge using sugar cubes. We quickly realised that we would also need a support when building the arch on the bridge. We are really pleased with our bridges that fulfilled our design brief.

We have enjoyed creating our class garden ready for Middleton in Bloom.

R.E. 
This half term we are investigating the key question; What makes some places sacred to believers? This week we have worked together to research information about a place of worship; a church, synagogue and a mosque to feedback to the rest of the class. We identified key features and wrote key words and phrases that made the holy place sacred, thinking about what sacred objects we would expect to find there and explaining why they are important. We then looked at sacred artefacts and identified which faith these were sacred to why. 

This week we have been measuring the mass of different objects in the classroom. We did this first by using the bucket balances and a standard measure. Then we used grams and kilograms and compared the mass of the different objects.

On Thursday we celebrated the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings by wearing red,white and blue. We also had a special lunch to commemorate the occasion. The children found it very interesting finding out about the significance of this historic event in World War II.

Welcome back Discoverers Class. We are in our final half term of the year and what an amazing year we have had so far! We have an action packed few weeks ahead with our production,trips,fun days and pool day to look forward to. We will continue to write on the theme of Chocolate then move on to ‘Bob the man on the Moon”. In maths we will be learning about mass, capacity end  consolidating the calculation strategies we have leant so far this year. 

We had a great time today at our teddy bears picnic. We also loved coming to school in our pyjamas!

In science we have been looking at different plants and learning about what they need to survive and stay healthy.

In English we have been reading the book 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' We all absolutely love this book.  This week we are writing a setting description for our our own imaginary chocolate room inside Will Wonka's factory.  To inspire us to generate some fantastic adjectives to describe what we can see, hear, smell, taste and feel we had our very own sensory experience. We then produced some fantastic setting descriptions.

This week we have been learning about time.  

We had a special visitor in Discoverers Class today.  The lady from SCARF and her friend Harold the giraffe told us lots of things about our bodies and our feelings. We had to help Harold and his friends and elp them to show kindness to one another.

In PE this half term we have been learning lots of hockey skills.  We love to play a game at the end of each lesson to practice our skills.

We were lucky enough to see the ducks in Explorers class today. They were very cute and cheeky. They loved it in the water.

Following on with our work based around the book Possum Magic we made Anzac biscuits this week. We have been learning all about instructions this week.  We followed the instructions to make the delicious Australian sweet treat, then we have written our own instructions.

We had a great time yesterday taking part in the sponsored bunny bounce. We enjoyed cheering each other on and trying to do as many bounces as we could in a minute. 

We loved taking part in the Greek Culture day today. In Discoverers Class we designed our own Greek Gods and did some traditional Greek dancing. We loved learning all of the moves.

Discoverers class had an amazing time at Neeli Mosque. It was a fantastic end to our RE topic on Islam. The children all knew lots about the Islamic faith and the Muslim community. We did lots of practical activities in the mosque including prayer positions and Wudu as well as having an full tour of the inside of the mosque.

R.E. 
Today we have visited St John’s Thornham church where Reverend Alison helped us to explore Holy Week. We listened to the story and added actions, making connections to how people might have been feeling at the time and how Christians feel about the story today. We explored how worship is shown in church, exploring different artefacts and linking them to the days of Holy Week and what they represent. Reverend Alison was impressed with all that we knew and the thoughtful questions we asked, she very kindly gifted us with a palm cross each which we used to recreate Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.

In DT we made a hummus dip and served it with our favourite dippers. We learnt lots of new skills such as slicing, juicing, crushing and blending. The best part was tasting it afterwards. It was delicious!

In science we have been learning about forces and magnets. We made toy cars powered by magnets. We were able to use magnetic force to move the cars forwards and backwards without even touching them!

In R.E. This half term we are exploring Christianity and the concept of Salvation. We have been learning about the events of Holy Week and have worked together to retell these by ordering pictures and discussing the events and their impact on Christians today and why this story is so important that it is remembered. 

In Design technology this week we have been tasting different dips and dippers.  We then had a vote for the most popular dip so that we could decide which one we are going to design and make.  We recorded the results from our survey in a tally chart and then put them onto a block graph.  We found out that the class favourite was hummus.  Look out for us making our own hummus dip soon.

In Design Technology we have been looking at where our food comes from and seasonal fruit and vegetables. We made seasonal fruit kebabs and then sorted the vegetables according to the part of the plant that we eat.

We had a lovely surprise this week = a secret reader - Fleur”s mummy read ‘The Whale Who Wanted More’ which was about discover, love and happiness found from others not things you buy. The children loved the story and their special treat of donuts. 

Happy New Year and welcome back Discoverers Class. We have fun action packed term ahead of us..  In English we will be reading the book 'Tuesday'.  In history we will be looking at some more significant individuals such as William Shakespeare and Christopher Columbus. In Science we will be learning all about forces and magnets. 

We had a fantastic workshop today with Kapla planks. Every child in school participated in the building of a fantastic masterpiece. Discoverers Class built the crocodiles and the cruise ships. We were all extremely proud of our contribution to the showcase and displayed great team work.

Discoverers and Explorers had a special visit today from the fire brigade. The children all got to have a go at becoming fire fighters and using the hose. They were also allowed into the fire engine which was very exciting. 

Take a look at the amazing game that we designed on our TASC day for the school Christmas Everyone loved playing the game and some of the children from Discoverers’ class helped out on the stall which was great fun.

We had a very special visitor today which was amazing!

Discoverers Class loved their breakfast with the elf and enjoyed dancing and singing along to the Christmas songs too. The elf was a very good dancer!

We made our Christingles today ready for our church service.

We had a great time doing the reindeer run raising money for Springhill Hospice.

In Design Technology we have been looking at and making different types of slider mechanisms.

This week we had a special visit from the Ice Trolls who live deep in the ice caves of Antarctica. We had to become scientists in order to help them whilst they were here. Unfortunately despite the cold weather we have been having it still wasn’t cold enough for the Ice Trolls here at school. Therefore we needed to conduct a science investigation to see what material would be the best to make a special cost for the trolls to keep them frozen. We then had to make sure the test was fair. We found out that the coats made out of tinfoil worked best. 

This week we had a special visitor in Discoverers Class - A Secret Reader. The children loved listening to the story ‘Jabari Jumps’.

This week in science we did a blubber experiment. We put our hands in a blubber glove and a plain plastic bag glove. We then put our hands in iced cold water for the same amount of time and observed what happened. We found out that the hand in the glove without the blubber was icy cold and we struggled to withstand it. The hand in the rubber glove felt cosy and warm. This helped us to understand about the purpose of blubber (a thick layer of fat) for animals in the polar regions.

In art we have been looking at the artist Edgar Degas. This week we painted our own seascapes in the style of Edgar Degas, including a sunset. The finished paintings were amazing. The children really captured the movement of the sea and used great light and tone. Some even created the effect of the reflection of the sun in the water.

Music

we have been learning how to play chords together on boomwhackers and concentrating on reading the notation and knowing when to play our own notes. We have enjoyed learning to play and sing the melody to you are my sunshine.

This week in maths we have been rounding numbers to the nearest 10.

Listen to our performance of our Harvest poem.

We really enjoyed doing our class assembly today in front of our parents and the rest of the school. We hope you enjoyed finding out about all the fun things we did whilst learning all about the Stone Age.

This half term in R.E. we are learning about Islam. We have been exploring beliefs, exploring artefacts and learning about people important to Muslims. This week we have listened to a story about the Prophet Muhammad and the cat, to help us retell the story we created our own models based on the story and used these to help explain how Muslims use this story to help them understand how to respect and care for God’s creation. 

We had a great time in Hopwood woods. We travelled back in time to the Stone Age and became hunter gatherers. We made pitfall and deadfall traps to catch the Stone Age animals. Then we made our own harpoons so that we could catch fish in the stream. We were really good at using our pointy harpoons to do this.

In English this week we have been doing some drama. First of all the children acted out the part in ‘Stone Age Boy’ when the boy meets the girl from the Stone Age for the first time. We then worked in groups to create freeze frames of different parts of the story.

We have been hard at work this week creating 3 new class displays. We wrote our dreams on dream jars for our school values display. After reading the book ‘The Huge Bag of Worries’ we did some fantastic writing to go on our display in the hall. Then we made some great predictions about our new class book ‘Stonw Age Boy’. I’m sue you will agree that they look amazing.

Discoverers were set a challenge today to find letters in our classroom and outdoor area then work as a team to make as many words as they could. The longest word made by one of the groups was the nine letter word- therapist. I was amazed at all the words they came up with and the super spelling.

Wow! What an amazing first few days we have had in Discoverers Class. The children have all settled in really well and have shown great gem work and resilience in some of the fun activities we have been doing. We came up with our class rules and promises to each other, built towers out of marshmallows and cocktail sticks and had a scavenger hunt.

For the Coronation Mrs Hunter challenged all of the classes to make a crown fit for a King. Take a look at our crown and the children going down the catwalk to show the rest of the school. I’m sure you will agree that it looks fantastic!

In maths this week we have been learning all about money and how to make different amounts.

In Science we have been learning all about shadows and how they are formed. We used the shadow puppet theatres that we had made to investigate how the size of a shadow can change. 

We went outside this morning to see what we could see in the school grounds. We found a box on the field. This inspired us to write some amazing poems called “What’s Inside the Box”.

In Design and Technology we have been designing and making a wind-powered toy car. We even got chance to test them out and race them outside today. They all worked really well.

We had great fun today doing the sponsored bunny bounce!

In Geography we have been learning all about the features of a river. We made our own river models out of salt dough. We then painted them and labelled the features. We are all really proud of the finished models.

We had great fun playing with Explorers’ Class in the snow.

Music

This half term the musical genre we are focusing on is disco, we have all been feeling the groove adding disco moves and actions to help us learn our performance song ‘Bringing us together’. This is the very start of our musical disco journey but we are already having lots of fun. We have asked the children to find some more examples of disco moves to share next week so please share your best moves to be included in our final performance 💃🏼🕺🏽

We had a great day on World Boksburg Day. We wrote poems based on the poem ‘10 things found in a Wizard’s Pocket’ by Ian McMillan. We even got to have our lunch as a treat in the classroom. 

In maths this week we ended our topic on 2D and 3D shapes by using the big mat and finding the coordinates of the various shapes.

R.E.

Discoverers have been exploring the Christian belief on the Trinity. The belief in one God but also in three different ways of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They have looked at different representations of this idea using an egg and an apple.

In science we have been investigating how shadows are formed and the type of object that make the clearest shadow. We found out that opaque objects make the best shadows, translucent objects make a pale shadow but transparent objects don’t make very clear shadows at all. 

We created lots of different artwork in the style of Wassily Kandinsky this week in art. We listened to music to inspire us just like he did.

We have been continuing to explore the Samba instruments and learning to play as an ensemble. We have had to listen carefully to the leader’s whistle that instructs us how to play and anticipate when to play our instruments. We have been learning simple Samba rhythms and having lots of fun.

In art today we have been looking at the artist Leonardo de Vinci. We concentrated on the skill of sketching that we learnt about in our art masterclass last week. We found out that Leonardo da Vinci was interested in anatomy and the human form. We then used wooden mannequins to help us sketch the outline of a person.

This week we have been writing a newspaper report about the tiger in the woods. To help us do this we created a class newspaper report based on another strange creature that was spotted in the woods. We used Talk for writing to orally perform our class model piece. Use the bar code below to watch us perform it. Can you guess who the strange creature is. 

We have been learning all about Samba music and how to play different Samba instruments; samba drums, guiros, agogo bells and tambours. We have been learning to play different rhythms and anticipating when to play listening to the leader who sets the tempo of the music. 

What amazing afternoon we had in Hopwood Woods. We found evidence of the missing tiger from Blackpool Zoo in the woods. There was orange and black stripy fur in the branches of the trees and we also found a small amount of green fur. We are hoping that the tiger is not too sick and that we can catch her before all of her stripes turn green! We made humane traps in groups to hopefully lure the tiger then capture her safely so that the zookeeper can take her back to the zoo. Each group made a unique trap with lots of amazing features. Watch this space to see if they work.

We had a special visitor today. Zara the zookeeper from Blackpool Zoo told us that one of her tigers had escaped whilst being transported to London. She wanted to know if we had seen her missing tiger called Alyona. We told her that we think that Alyona came to our classroom over the weekend because when we came to school on a Monday our classroom was messed up and there were giant muddy paw prints everywhere. The zookeeper was very worried about the tiger when we said what she had eaten and thinks she may get sick. She even things her stripes may turn green! She has asked us to help her.  She wants us to make some ‘LOST’ posters. She also asked us to go to Hopwood Woods (where we think she may be hiding) to make some humane traps. She told us not to be afraid of Alyona because  she is a very friendly tiger who is probably very scared.

Today in computing we took part in the BUPA Get With the Programme completing a coding activity. We had to design and write an algorithm to get a robot to pack up healthy lunch nags in time for lunch. We had great fun doing it and faced a few challenges along the way making us re-think and debug our algorithms:

This morning when Discoverers’ came into their classroom they were shocked by what they saw. There was lots of empty food packets everywhere, an empty teapot, empty cans of Daddy”s beer and giant paw prints on the floor near the door. When they looked even closer they also found paw prints on the tables and on the side of the sink! We also couldn’t fill our water bottles because there was no water left in the taps! Immediately We all thought that it must have been the tiger. Later on Mrs Worsley in the office confirmed our suspicions by finding footage on the security cameras of the tiger caught in the act. We then wrote eye witness statements describing what we had found to inform the local police. 

First week back in Discoverers”Class

Wow what a week we have had! We have had lots of fun this week getting to know our new class. I have been really impressed with your growth mindsets and how well you have all worked in different teams. We ended the week with a scavenger hunt in the classroom and our outside area. I can see that this year you are all going to be fantastic learners. 

Welcome back Discoverers' Class!

I hope that you have all had a fantastic summer, I certainly have.  I am really looking forward to seeing yo all again on Monday morning.  We have lots of exciting thing to look forward to this term and in the year ahead.  I can't wait to see you smiley faces and hear your laughter filling my classroom. Myself, Mrs Taylor, Miss Smith and Miss Jones have been working hard to get our classroom ready for you all and planning some fun activities for us to do.  

See you all very soon

Mrs Howarth

Discoverers’ Class had an amazing day today enjoying their end of year treat on the inflatable. I don’t know who loved it more the children or Mrs Howarth! 

In Design and Technology this half term we have been learning all about structures and how to make them stable and strong. We have designed a bridge in groups using a running bond. Have a look at some of the bridges we made following our designs using sugar cubes.

We made Anzac biscuits just like the ones in Possum Magic. We worked well together to follow the instructions then after making them we wrote our own instructions.

Today in science we have been learning all about soil. Mrs Worsley gave us a problem to solve. She has been asked to plant some plants in the school grounds but she doesn’t know which area to plant them in. There are lots of different types of soil in our grounds and she needed to know which would. Be best for planting. First of all we looked closely at some soil samples to see what we could see. We found out the soil is made up of lots of different things and that without it there would be no life on planet earth. Who would have thought that soil could be so amazing, we then found out about the different layers of soil and the different types. Finally we conducted an experiment to find out which soil type was the most permea